DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale The United States Social Security Administration's internet portal has frequently gone offline in recent weeks, and presented inaccurate or incomplete information to users, perhaps because of changes steered by Elon Musk's cost-trimming DOGE unit. A Washington Post report suggests DOGE’s introduction of a fraud checking …
Muscolini is emphatically not the "genius at all things" that his sycophants believe him to be, and 20-something hackers are not experienced enough to meddle with such a carefully tuned and tweaked and babysat system as what they messed with.
In fact, allowing such people to mess with your code base usually precludes the sudden realization that the entire database has been corrupted and you've lost the last 20 years of records...
First, lets get the COBOL thing out of the way. There is zero chance than ANY of the web site is written in COBOL. At best it's accessing a data repository that is managed by the COBOL apps. More likely, its looking at a replicated reporting database that is refreshed on a nightly basis. This has been a common practice for businesses setting up web sites on legacy systems for a couple decades.
Second, since the DOGE squad started attacking Federal systems, uptimes have dropped dramatically. SSA has even changed their system availability:
This service is not available at this time.
Please try again during our regular service hours (Eastern Time):
Day Service Hours
Monday-Friday 4:15 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.
Saturday 5:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sunday 8:00 a.m. - 11:30 p.m.
Federal Holidays Same hours as the day the holiday occurs.
Web site availability hours, WTF?
I suspect this is caused by the push to use login.gov. The Federal government over the last few years has been pushing agencies to use centralized logins. I moved mine from an SSA account to login.gov a couple years ago. But with the mess that DOGE has created, it appears that login.gov has limited hours of operation. Note that the above message came from login.gov, not ssa.gov.
In fairness, gubbermint web portals going offline outside office hours is nothing new: the British mastered that particular art years ago! On several occasions, I've seen messages from the UK's online tax system telling me that I can't see my updated records because I've been foolish enough to try posting changes at the weekend. Personally, I suspect they print out web-submitted updates and have them typed back in by someone in the next office over. Making TAX Digital...but only between 8am and 7pm, Monday to Friday. :)
Unlikely, you don't let your core systems anywhere near the Internet, especially if they are from "1979"... They are firewalled to hell and back and as the OP says, SOP is to use an intermediary database that is updated at regular intervals and a webserver to handle the web pages themselves.
While I agree with the sentiment that COBOL shouldn't be whatsoever involved in any web request, there's certainly a non-zero chance that it is.
Perhaps a COBOL program is required to query an ancient database, and that query is used periodically and/or on request, to update a (more modern) intermediate database as mentioned above. Or worse, the website might have to call COBOL on the fly if it needs to update the core DB.
So, any change to the interface/schema between the website DB and the COBOL DB may require a change in COBOL
Based on personal experience, those hours look very similar, if not identical, to what I’ve gotten used to over the last several years. I felt a bit of discrimination based on the apparent assumption that all Social Security clients and their support personnel are frighteningly early risers who are all tucked up in bed (without their phones) by 11:00 PM. Oddly enough, the Thrift Savings Plan, the 401(k)-like retirement investment mechanism for federal employees, has a website that’s available much later into the wee hours, including on weekends.
Actually, the social security web site has long had "office hours" before DOGE. But the switch from username and password to login.gov is only for users in the United States. Expats are required to use something called "ID.ME", something I found out by many hours of research and analyzing a slew of incomprehensible error messages. But wait, there's more! My country will not allow any requests to ID.ME - the page is blocked by Cloudfllare. I can access the ID.ME help page, but it only uses bots. I asked the bot for an agent, and the bot said ID.ME has no human support whatsoever.
Waiting on the phone for hours for Social Security support in the USA is near impossible when calling from SE Asia. Dang, what was so terrible about a simple user name and password in the first place?
DOGE operatives have apparently expressed a belief they can rebuild SSA’s website in six months
After conclusion of their overhaul of government systems, they will return to the Musk fold where they'll turn their attention to a ground up rewrite of Tesla Autopilot, in, 2 weeks*
* I have read the tea leaves
""Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child*," Dudek wrote, according to Representative Gerald Connolly (D-VA)."
A really professional grown-up response, if there ever was. It does fit the current administration like a glove.
It does remind us of how the Orange utan tried to use the distribution of vital medical equipment to punish Democratic states during the pandemic.
* Maine's Democratic Governor Jane Mills
There are so many ways the US government can be made more efficient. Step 1: only people with an internet connection can apply for for social security. This can be simplified by restricting access to Starlink subscribers so location can be verified by satellite. The payment side can be simplified by requiring all recipients to receive their money via an x.com account.
"are going to test it on a system the poorer people rely on."
The whole point is to demotivate anyone form ever even trying to seek any assistance from the Government.
I would like to remind you of the memorable words of former Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd who so clearly expressed the philosophy and policies of the Republican Party towards the citizens of the USA during the Texas Freeze that killed 246 (or rather, over 800):
No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out!
...
Only the strong will survive and the week will perish. Folks, God Has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts. Am I sorry that you have been dealing without electricity and water; yes! But I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves!
Note the reference to social darwinism: Only the strong will survive and the week will perish.
<No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out!>
It seems to sail right over Republicans' heads that people looking for a "hand out" are people who have paid their taxes and their power bills, and do indeed have a right to expect what they've paid for to be there when they need it. They get angry at "entitlements," but they're called that because people are rightfully entitled to what they pay for. I don't understand where this is coming from. Well, hate, I guess, against anyone who - uh - wants anything from anyone for any reason?
If they had any self-awareness, they would have come to the same conclusion....
You work at SpaceX as a software engineer, analyst, etc. and Elon pulls you off real work to go tilt at windmills in a sector you almost certainly know nothing about?
This person was the least productive or successful member of Elon's 'day-job' and they are being put there as a patsy for when this whole thing goes sideways. They are the political cover for when shit just doesn't work and congressional inquest is created to find out who should be blamed.
Sorry to Big Balls and his fellow DOGE-ettes but take some advice from this seasoned, career, US civil servant: start looking for another job now and don't claim this on your resume/CV. You walked into a political land-war as cannon-fodder and immediately stepped on a landmine.
Oh, if only.
At least school children try to remember how to do simple arithmetic, so they'll be ready for something really important, like the end of month test (Mr Baxter is hard, but fair and works to a schedule).
Now, let us try again, Donald: if you want the minimum of a number k and 10, what is the result when k is negative? No, you *do* know what a negative number is, we had a look at your tax returns, remember?
>> "SSA website went down because of atypical high volume and it’s a 1979 platform,"
I don't believe a 1979 mainframe would still be running today. Support, spare parts, etc. Possibly the speaker refers to when the software was originally written.
I do believe IBM mainframes got a TCP/IP stack in the early/mid 1990s via the Open Systems Adapter, I think.
I know for certain that current IBM mainframe resources can be accessed via REST or SOAP web services because I've written the CICS/COBOL code to make it happen.
I would really like to find out what the actual problems are, the actual technology stack in use, because I used to be part of a team that solved these sorts of problems and thus it's a point of interest
"SSA website went down because of atypical high volume and it’s a 1979 platform," the SSA wrote on X. "It had nothing to do with DOGE. In fact, this problem has alerted to an issue that DOGE will promptly fix."
No way will that placate the anti-Trumpers at all. Blaming Musk means it must be his fault and not blaming Musk means it must be his fault.
I don’t get this obsession with ditching perfectly well performing systems just because they are more than 10 years old.
In the analogue world we leave things as they are if they work well enough. E.g. Brunnelss bridge over th Menie straight. A couple of hundred years old built using materials and technology that no one would dream of using today but hey it works and trains travel over/in it every day.
So Social Security has not changed significantly in the last 40 years save the replacement of forms and snail mail with telephone and web sites to communicate with citizens. So I doubt there is any real requirement to upgrade the system.
Any rewrite would probably ditch an over inflated bill from IBM for an overinflated bill from AWS.
This doesn't in any way invalidate your point, but pedantically there are two bridges over the Menai Strait, and neither were designed by Brunel.
Thomas Telford’s Menai Suspension road bridge opened in 1826 and the Britannia Bridge, once rail only and now road and rail, opened in 1850, a box-girder design by William Fairbairn and Robert Stephenson.
https://www.visitanglesey.co.uk/en-gb/explore/towns/menai-bridge
Brunel of course designed many fine bridges, the Royal Albert over the Tamar and Clifton Suspension bridges being among the best known, and many of them are still in use. Its probable though that most older bridges have been appreciably upgraded over the decades, if for no other reason than loads are far greater than they used to be.
Of course it's the COBOL code, after running for decades it decided to pack up when goons came into the building, of course ir has nothing to do with clowns messing witrh live systems without the time to understand how these systems interact first let alone details on the code base. I'm sure it's not that, it's because the old code is old.
What a bunch of jokers.
I can't believe the GOP senate allows this. That these people aren't in jail--that they were allowed to do this in the first place. Trump has shown he is a complete moron, who hires those like himself, in other words morons and incompetents.
A headline could go in each daily paper--Trump is a complete moron and shows it once again--Spineless GOP senate goes along with it.
I wonder if he'll stop elections. Or, if there are elections, if the Trumptards will still vote for him.
I see occasional things, Oh, it's due the Democrats. Puuhlleeze--what is wrong with you people? And Trump, and other GOPers want to hurt education so they can grow more Trumptards.
We deserve this.
"Or, if there are elections, if the Trumptards will still vote for him."
Yes, that's the answer to "I can't believe the GOP senate allows this. They are frightened of their own voters, the MAGA base. Musk has already threatened $multi-million funding to any (R) willing to stand against incumbent (R)'s who don't toe the line. And the MAGA base will do what Trump tells them to do. Few politicians will stand by (any remaining) principles in the face of that. They don't want to jump off the fast moving gravy train.
step 1) break the SSA's systems
step 2) claim you can fix them with new software
step 3) new software fails, claim being "government" is the problem and its operations should be privatized as the solution
step 4) some newly created company Musk "just happens" to be majority owner/investor of wins a no bid contract to take over its administration
As someone who has interacted with the Social Security (and Medicare) quite a bit in the last 5 months, I have not experienced super long hold times (maybe 15 min was the max). Talked to live humans who knew their job and were very very willing to assist. Had easy access to the website (never found it down). I got a bit frustrated with processes and paperwork, but then we all know that can be improved and it is no worse (perhaps better) and working through the purchasing departments at major Tech firms. And them recently, I got a letter to call them, and they are requesting I come in person - which I will gladly do (the office is open and not far away), for the purpose of verifying in person that I am who I say I am (hmmm ID laws, what a concept).
I am sure all of this can be streamlined and process improved, however to do so in our current government system would take and RFI, RFP, award process that would protested by Oracle, Microsoft, AWS and every other tech firm. Then 3 years to develop. By that time out of date. So perhaps, some of the craziness is good.
"I have not experienced super long hold times (maybe 15 min was the max). Talked to live humans who knew their job and were very very willing to assist. Had easy access to the website (never found it down)."
It will depend on where cuts are made. Plenty of things will go on working for a while after the repair and maintenance team is sacked. When something breaks, nobody is left that knows how to fix it. When Congress passes a law that makes changes to the system, nobody is left that can implement it and it may get bodged breaking more things to try and be in compliance with the new laws.
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